Elif Andac, University of Kentucky, $7,000 for Reconciling Diversity Among Nation Building: A Comparative Study of Ethno-religious Conflict in Turkey (June 2010). This study investigates the conditions that result from diverse religious and ethnic communities living together in relative peace in the midst of conflict-torn regions of Turkey. Data will be collected from fieldwork and in-depth interviews for two comparison groups that will be analyzed with the diverse and relatively conflict-free community.

Caroline Lee, Lafayette College; Michael McQuarrie, University of California-Davis; and Edward Walker, University of Vermont for Democratizing Inequalities: Participation without Parity? (June 2009). The topic of this project has been referred to as “regressive progressivism” or the unintended consequences of the expansion of lay participation in government, corporate, and nonprofit decision-making. Some of these unintended consequences include the elevation of new industries, professionals, and bureaucracies to conduct “facilitated engagement.”

Tim Bartley,Indiana University, Global Standards in Domestic Settings: "Corporate Social Responsibility" in Practice (December 2007). The PI investigates if nation states play an important role in the shaping of how private standards of corporate social responsibility get put to use. The research documents differences between two types of corporate standards—labor conditions and environmental standards in China, Indonesia, and Mexico. The characteristics of governance systems determine the ease or difficulty in implementing standards.

Genevieve Zubrzycki, University of Michigan, Nationalism, Religion, and Secularization in Quebec and Poland(December 2007). This project focuses on issues related to the relationship between state reformation, religion, and nationalism by offering a comparative perspective between Poland and Quebec, countries that offer points of convergence and contrast. The study analyzes both institutional/structural dimensions and cultural representations.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Brown University; Marcelo K. Silva, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; Ernesto Ganuza, Instituto para Estudios Sociales Avanzados; Arturo Alvarado, Centro de Estudios Sociologicos for Civic Participation, City Governance, and Transitions to Democracy in Brazil, Spain, and Mexico (June 2007). This project focuses on the decline in the power and autonomy of national states, and the growth of power and autonomy of local governments due to an expanded global economy and the growth of supranational organizations. The purpose of this project, the first step in a larger project, is to understand how local participatory democracy emerges Brazil, Spain, and Mexico.

Erik Larson, Macalester College, Coup or Commission? Legal Consciousness, Political Contention, and Reconciliation in Fiji (December 2006). The PI interviews political elites and ordinary citizens in Fiji, the site of a recent coup and ongoing ethnic tensions to understand the ways that law affects social and political change and popular thinking, especially when racial and ethnic tensions are a significant part of the context.The PI found that members of the public understood law and politics as distinct from the state.

David Fitzgerald, University of California-San Diego, and David Cook-Martin, University of California-Irvine, Race and Immigration in the Americas (December 2006). This study investigates the factors that explain racial and national origin preferences and quota systems in the Americas over the last 150 years. It employs a of a database consisting of racial and national origin preferences in 22 countries’ immigration laws. The PIs find that liberal regimes had more racialized policies compared to authoritarian regimes especially when interest groups are involved in the process.

Paulette Lloyd, Indiana University, for Cooperative Exchanges in Confronting Transnational Crime (June 2009). Transnational crime has become a global issue with nation-states embracing differing responses to the use of terrorism, the invasion of civil liberties, and incarcerations. The study informs discussions about whether the similarity of cultural and legal systems, shared memberships (focus theory), or nation-states pursuing their interests (realism) best explain international cooperation.

Esther Ngan-ling Chow, American University, International Conference on Gender and Social Transformations: Global, Transnational and Local Realities and Perspectives (June/December 2008).The conference, co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Institute of China and the All China Women’s Federation, addressed the issues, social problems, and emergent phenomena that question existing theoretical paradigms of globalization and transnationalism from feminist perspectives.

Joanna Dreby, Kent State University, $7,000 for The Effects of Parental Migration on Mexican Children’s Educational and Migratory Aspirations (June 2008). According to the PI, tens of thousands of immigrants migrating from Mexico to the United States leave their children behind. The study asks whether parents are able to translate their sacrifices into gains for their children. Alternatively, does separation create such discord in their families that children’s grades suffer and they too migrate?The results show those with mothers in the U.S. have higher aspirations while those with both parents in the U.S. have lower aspirations.

Lynn Fujiwara, University of Oregon, The Politics of Removal: Forced Deportations, Exclusion, and the Impact on Immigrant Families (June 2008). According to the PI, contemporary immigration in the U.S. remains an often volatile, policy-driven matter. Recent policies have led to the increase of forced removals of undocumented and legally residing immigrants. This research studies the impact of these removals on a sample of Cambodian and Latino families.

Christina A. Sue, University of Colorado-Boulder, John or Juan? How Mexican and Mexican-American Parents Choose Names for their Children (June 2008). Selecting a name for a child represents an important cultural decision because they signify ethnic identity, particularly the identity that parents would like their children to have. For immigrants and their descendants, first names can be a powerful sociological indicator of socio-cultural assimilation. This study examines the naming practices of Mexican and Mexican-American parents who gave birth to children in Los Angeles County.

Leah Schmalzbauer, Montana State University, for Off the Migratory Map: Uncovering Unknown Family Survival Strategies (June 2007). The purpose of this project is to study Latino incorporation and family survival in southwestern Montana, a non-gateway immigrant settlement area. Among the major questions addressed are how immigrant families survive without the benefit of ethnic enclaves, what is the role of women in survival strategies, and how does the reception of these immigrants affect assimilation?

Norma Fuentes-Mayorga, Fordham University, The Role of Moroccan Mothers on the Education Choices and Work Trajectories of their Daughters in Amsterdam (December 2006). The purpose of this project is to understand how immigrant Moroccan mothers in Amsterdam influence the educational and work activities of their daughters.She examines a variety of situations such as the role of immigrant mothers as “brokers” for their daughters rather than their sons.

Dina G. Okamoto, University of California-Davis, The Civic and Political Incorporation of immigrants in Non-Traditional Gateways (December 2006). This study integrates the sociology of immigration with the sociology of social movements. Okamoto examines patterns of collective action among new immigrant groups, especially in non-gateway cities—Charlotte, NC, Atlanta, GA, and Salt Lake City, UT—and builds a theoretical framework that moves beyond individual adaptation of immigrants.

Tomas Roberto Jimenez, Stanford University, Immigration, Assimilation, and the U.S. Host Society (June 2009). Recent research on immigration to the United States emphasizes the assimilation and changing identities of post-1965 immigrants and their dependents. Rather than viewing immigration as a one-way process, this study asks how the growth of immigration affects the identities of U.S. citizens who have been in this country for three generations or more.

Elisabeth Brooke Harrington, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Reproduction of Wealth and Inequality in the U.S. and Europe: The Role of Trust and Estate Planners (June 2009). This study focuses on how inequality in wealth is produced among the economic elite. Instead of examining the elite themselves, the PI scrutinizes the strategies of professionals who serve the wealthy, namely trust and estate planners, who help the rich shelter their money. The PI finds that these professionals play a vital role in the perpetuation of social stratification.

Ebenezer Obadare, University of Kansas, Miss Bell’s Girls: Gender Emigration and the Socio-Cultural Aspects of the Decline in Health Services in Nigeria (December 2006). This study relates the efforts of the British Colonial Government in Nigeria to recruit, train, and raise the competence and status of Nigerian nurses to the degradation of the Nigerian public health care system. As a result of the transformation from the nursing profession as menial labor to a profession for the elite, the nurses were able to emigrate from Nigeria and withdraw their contribution from the state and civil society.

John M. Eason, Duke University, Prison Proliferation and Rural Disadvantage (June 2009).Most studies of incarceration study the supply side of the phenomenon or the growth of the prison population. In contrast, this study investigates why prisons are located where they are and what is the impact of location? Eason examines the effects of prisons on small towns in terms of economic development and population characteristics.

Meredith Kleykamp, University of Kansas, From War to Work: How Employers Shape Veterans’ Transition into the Civilian Labor Market (June 2008). This research seeks to understand how recently separated military veterans make transitions back into the civilian labor force. In particular, it focuses attention on the role of employers. It measures whether employers exhibit discriminatory or preferential attitudes toward and treatment of military veterans in the hiring process.The PI found that employers did not discriminate but rather that there is a mismatch between veterans’ skills and available jobs.

E.J. Bjornstrom, University of Missouri, Columbia, $5,279 for Neighborhood Built Environment and Individual Sense of Control: A Fundamental Cause Approach to Improving Population Health (June 2010). This study examines the relation between residential built environments and individual sense of control, assuming that built environments are “fundamental causes of health”. Multilevel modeling and three data sets will be used to examine characteristics of the built environment including the provision of resources to aid routine activities and the facilitating of social relationships and individual sense of control.

Melinda D. Kane, East Carolina University, $6,084.00 for Creating Safe Space: Predicting the Presence of GLBT Student Groups on College Campuses (June 2010). The goal of this project is to explain the presence of university-recognized GLBT student groups on the college and university campuses in six U.S. states, and why some campuses are more institutionally supportive than others. The Principal Investigator will use Hierarchical linear modeling to examine the importance of public opinion on campus, community resources, and institutional and political environments.

Laura Stark, Wesleyan University, $6,900 for How Have Research Participants Affected Biomedical Research? (June 2010). This study hypothesizes that human subjects’ beliefs, and the organizations that recruit them, can affect biomedical research practices. The interaction between human subjects and the bureaucratic structures that have been developed to protect them is the focus of the study. Oral histories will be used to create an initial data set of human subjects who lived at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health between 1953 and 1966; the years that heralded the beginning of a change in medical ethics that culminated in human subjects’ protections. The author proposes to link the subjects’ beliefs with changing medical practices.

Pamela Popielarz, University of Illinois-Chicago, $7,000 for Schools of Bureaucracy: Fraternal Orders in the Industrializing Midwest, 1890-1920 (June 2010).The purpose of this study is to ascertain the link between the popularity of fraternal orders and the growing bureaucratic organizational form in the industrializing Midwest.The PI will investigate whether fraternal orders are “schools for bureaucracy” by incorporating a fixed division of labor, hierarchy of offices, formal rules, and permanent written files.

Erin Leahey, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, $6,370 for Straight from the Source: How Highly Cited Authors Explain their Influence (December 2008). The PI analyzes an under-examined data set of interviews with authors of heavily cited science articles as to why they thought their work had become important.The thoughts, ideas, understandings, and “origin stories” of the authors themselves reveal that they think there is one dominant pathway to scientific influence—support of professional networks, novelty of the work, and usefulness to subsequent scholars.

Janet K. Shim, University of California-San Francisco, Cultural Health Capital: Developing an Approach to Understanding Health Care Inequalities. This study develops the PI’s concept of Cultural Health Capital (CHC), defined as repertoire of cultural skills, verbal and non-verbal competencies, and interactional styles that can influence clinical interactions accounting for social inequities in quality of health care.

Frederick F Wherry, University of Michigan, and Nina Bandelj, University of California, Davis. The Cultural Wealth of Nations (June 2009). This conference proposal asks “How do stocks of “cultural wealth,” for example, in the form of heritage sites or indigenous crafts shape economic activities?” The conference explored how this form of capital is constructed and deployed in economic development or how the failure to do so dampens economic activities.

Stephen Lippmann, Miami University, The Social and Cultural Origins of the Radio Broadcasting Industry in the United States (June 2007). This project examines the social and cultural dynamics that contributed to the emergence and evolution of the radio broadcasting industry in the United States from 1900-1934.He examines the importance of human agency in the processes of socio-cultural framing and organizational development.

Susan C. Pearce, East Carolina University, Re-imagined Communities, Mnemonic Mirrors, and Europe’s 1989 Revolutions: Research on the Twenty-Year Anniversaries (December 2008). In order to understand the social memories produced by the state and civil society, the PI conducted ethnographic research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia as these countries commemorate the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc of the former Soviet Union. The PI demonstrates that context matters.

Steve Zavestoski, University of San Francisco, for Embodied Health Movements and Transnational Social Movements: Linking the Local and Transnational through the Spread of Environmental Hazards (June 2007). Many health movements organize around contestations over the discovery, definition, cause, treatment, and prevention of environmental causes of illness.The PI proposes to focus on social movement organizations in the global South, their formation, strategizing, and outcomes.

Sigrun Olafsdottir, Boston University, Karen Lutfey, New England Research Institutes, and Patricia Rieker, Boston University, $3,100 for Expanding Comparative Frames for Medical Sociology: Professionals, Patients, and the Public (December 2007). This is the latest in a series of international conferences to encourage comparative research and fostering cross-national collaborations that focus on the relationship between social stratification and health outcomes. By failing to use a comparative framework, themes such as politics, health, and culture and health have been especially understudied by medical sociologists.

Virag Molnar, the George Washington University, The Great Budapest Rat Massacre: A Case Study in Urban Public Health (December 2006). This is an historical and sociological case study of a massive rat control project undertaken in Budapest, Hungary in 1971 and 1972 and its aftermath. It focuses on institutions, policies, and historical events that explain the city’s 30-year success in improving public health despite its resource-poor condition.

Linda Dorsten, State University of New York-Fredonia and Yuhui Li, Rowan University, Data Collection and Modeling with Hard-to-Study but Rapidly Growing Populations: Socio-Economic Development, Ethnic Population and Elder Health in China (December 2007). The PIs answer the question of how elder health in China is affected by community resources in areas with high minority concentrations and limited socioeconomic development. They test a series of strategies for measuring age and health and gather individual-level and macro-level data.

Arina Gerstava, Washington State University, $3,193 for Developmental Links between Victimization and Offending (June 2010). This study compares inter-individual differences in order to empirically test if there is co-development of victimization and offending over the life course. The PI uses the National Youth Survey data on the frequency of minor and serious crimes committed and victimization experienced (such as sexual and other physical attacks) to empirically respond to her hypotheses. These data will be used to model trajectories of offending and victimization using two data-analytic techniques—latent growth modeling and auto-regressive cross-lagged panel models.

Kathryn Gold Hadley, California State University-Sacramento, $7,000 for Deconstructing the Model Minority Experience in an Urban High School: Educational Expectations and Ethnic Identities (December 2008). The PI investigates how Asian American students at a low-income public high school manage their ethnic identities in the face of academic stereotyping and varied academic performances.

Lindsey Wilkinson, Portland State University,and Jennifer Pearson, Wichita State University, $6,550 for Exploring the Role of Heteronormative School Culture in the Sexual Identity Development, Disclosure, and Well-Being of Young Adults (December 2008). The PIs analyze data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), and supplement it with in-depth interviews of young adults. The purpose of this data collection effort is to investigate how variation in heteronormativity within high schools impacts the well-being of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults and the construction and disclosure of sexual identity in young adulthood.

Pamela Quiroz, Vernon Lindsay, and Endea Murry: University of Illinois-Chicago, $3,800 for Marketing Diversity and the New Politics of Diversity: An Engaged Ethnography of Race, Space, and Place (June 2010). This funded study is part of a larger ethnographic study of the race and class micro processes that are part of the larger Chicago school reform effort in the “new politics of desegregation”. The fourth year of data will be collected on a small cohort of African American male high school students selected from a highly-rated Chicago high school and a cohort of students not selected for the program. Once collected, this cohort data will be entered into the ethnography and the entire data collection effort will be analyzed.

Khaya Delaine Clark and Tyrone Forman, Emory University, for Racial Attitudes in Childhood: Conceptual Problems and Measurement Issues (June 2009). This study seeks to improve the way in which racial attitudes are measured in young children by expanding the response categories to include the following options: “both” “neither” and “I don’t know” as opposed to the forced choice situations that are generally included in psychological tests of race preferences for children.

Jane Sell, Texas A&M University, and Carla Goar, Northern Illinois University, for Expanding Experimental Investigations of Race/Ethnicity in Sociology (June 2007). According to the PIs, experimental sociologists have not made a major contribution to the theoretical literature on race and ethnicity, especially in the study of groups rather than individuals. In order to increase the contribution of experimental research, the PIs organized a conference where participants identify incentives and barriers to experimental research in this area, map out topics that can be studied experimentally, and foster collaborations among established and new experimenters.

Mary E. Campbell, University of Iowa, for Stress and Ethnic Misclassification by Observers (June 2007). The purpose of this project is to study the effects of mis-classification or mismatch between others “observed” ethnic identities and individual’s own perceived ethnic identities. The project measures the stress white and Latina subjects experience when others perceive their race or ethnicity differently than they do by examining the level of cortisol present in the individual’s saliva.

Erin Ruel and Deirdre Oakley, Georgia State University, for Journaling the Public Housing Relocation Process: Home, Place and Strata in the Social Hierarchy (December 2008).The goal of this project is to employ participant audio journaling and photo-elicitation, an innovative and little used methodology within the social sciences, in order to explore the lives of public housing residents as they are relocated to subsidized, private market housing.

Michelle Inderbitzin, Oregon State University, Research from the Inside Out: Collaborative Research and Writing with Inmates in the Oregon State Penitentiary (December 2007).This is a project to train prisoners to collaborate with professional sociologists by engaging in research and writing on issues related to incarceration and changes wrought by increasing imprisonment rates, longer sentences, shift away from rehabilitation, and similar policy shifts.

Andrew London and Janet M. Wilmoth Syracuse University, for Military Service, Social (Dis)Advantage, and the Life Course (June 2007). There are numerous unanswered questions concerning how military service directly and indirectly affects life-course trajectories including marriage, divorce, health, fertility, mortality, and socio-economic status. There are numerous longitudinal data sets that can be used to answer these questions. The purpose of this project was to hold a conference to create new collaborative networks that stimulated new empirical and methodological studies that use these data sets.

Annette Lareau and Kristen Harknett, University of Pennsylvania,Thinking about the Family in an Unequal Society: A Workshop Proposal (December 2008). Research opportunities for sociologists are increasingly stratified because younger scholars at non-elite institutions have higher teaching loads, fewer colloquia, and a lack of travel monies and fewer chances to obtain informal feedback concerning their work. The PIs ran a one-day workshop to provide such an opportunity for 20 qualitative and quantitative early- and mid-career researchers whose area is sociology of the family, but who are not employed at Research I universities.Along with efforts to advance the quality of future research in sociology of the family, the workshop developed a network for future collaboration and exchange.(back to top)